Special issue on Gender and accounting revisited

In 1992, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
published a ground-breaking special issue that considered aspects of gender and
accounting. The papers in this issue took a variety of different approaches to
the subject but all went beyond simply looking at the gendered division of
labour within the profession. These contributions addressed not only the way in
which feminist insights could help us better understand the accounts we produce
but also the extent to which insights from feminist theory could help us to
understand aspects of accounting practice.

Since then, some notable contributions continuing this tradition have been
offered and work has also been undertaken which has looked at the impact of
gender on the professional project. However, richer explorations and insights
informed by feminist scholarship remain under-represented in the literature and
much of the work that seeks to address issues of gender remains focused on the
gendered division of labour. This special issue seeks to change that situation,
revisiting the subject in order to take stock of where we are now and to
reappraise where feminist thoughts, theories and ideals can take us. We wish to
reconsider the situation of women, particularly as accountants and as academics
studying accounting as well as in our roles as stakeholders in a society for
which we seek to account and in which we are accounted for. We wish to
reconsider the extent to which feminist theorising can help to develop accounts
that are emancipatory for society as a whole as well as all the various
sectional interests that comprise society. In particular we hope to further the
process of integrating feminist insights into mainstream accounting issues and
practice.